NCRI- Aug.25 08 –The European Union categorically condemns the hanging in Isfahan on Tuesday 19 August of Reza Hejazi, convicted of a murder he was said to have committed in 2004, when he was 15 years old. It is very concerned by this news, which brings to five the number of executions in Iran since the beginning of this year for crimes committed when the perpetrator was a minor.

These executions flagrantly contravene the international obligations and commitments of Iran as expressly set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibit the execution of minors and of persons convicted of crimes committed when they were minors. The European Union urges Iran immediately to bring its legislation and its practices into line with these documents, which it voluntarily adopted and ratified.

As it stated in the strongest possible terms in its declaration of 19 August, the Presidency of the European Union urgently calls upon the Islamic Republic of Iran to consider an appropriate way of dealing with juvenile offenders, such as youth courts and sentences designed mainly to be educational and to facilitate their social rehabilitation.

The Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia* and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilization and Association Process and potential candidates Albania and Montenegro, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, align themselves with this declaration.

* Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.